Some women like to watch MMA. Some men like to get manicures. It's the twenty-first century—gender lines are blurry, and thats A-OK. But the next frontier might surprise you: lines of cosmetics, specially geared toward men. Or as one entrepreneur calls it, urban camouflage. Could this really catch on with regular guys? GQ's Drew Magary—the regular-est guy we know, a suburban dad of three—test-drove all the new products to find out what happens when people stop being polite and start asking: "What the f#%k is on your face, brah?"

I'll bet you've spent the past few years reasonably satisfied with that face—that smug loser face—you see in the mirror every day: those two eyes and that nose and those two lips and those teeth and that one stray ear hair. You might even steal an occasional glance in the mirror right after you're done making a mess of the office toilet. Looking good, you!

But you're not looking good. The truth is that you look like a plate of spaghetti that someone left in a sauna for eight days. Did you know you have as much as 20 percent more oil on your face than a woman? OIL. There's a fucking petroleum spill gushing out of your gross mug every waking second. And pores! You have those! Giant, open, rotting sewers on your face, leaking out fatty acids and day-old Brie rinds. It's all there. Out in the open, for everyone but you to see. You disgust me. I disgust me. We should all disgust one another.

But the well-groomed execs at BIG BEAUTY are prepared to do something about this. Big-name brands (Clinique, Tom Ford, etc.) are rolling out new lines that include male concealers, bronzers, and eye gels. Is it makeup? Of course it's makeup. But you won't find any guyliner or nail polish in these line extensions. This is all a clever—and potentially lucrative—way of expanding the grooming category into bold new territory, which is why you will never hear the word makeup cross the lips of any brand manager affiliated with these products. "We don't say the M-word, " says Michele Probst, founder of a men's-grooming-product company called Mënaji. Mënaji is a word Michele made up. "It's loosely based on the Scandinavian language," she says. "Mënesse means 'man,' and formagi means 'power,' so it means 'man power.' "

To keep you men from running for the hills, this stuff is strictly for "cleaning up," as Michele puts it. And I could use cleaning up. Like many other 37-year-old men, I do a poor job taking care of my face. I never wash it, unless letting shampoo runoff spill over it counts. I never exfoliate it. The reasons are because (a) I am lazy, (b) I don't want to spend any more money on toiletries than I already do, and (c) DURRRR I AIN'T NO PRETTY BOY DURRRR. But I spent a few days using these various products to see if they could make my face glow like a nascent sun, and also because GQ made me. Here is what happened.

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DAY 1: I open all the packages from Tom Ford, Evolution Man, Clinique, Jane Iredale, and Mënaji, which delivers its products in a repurposed cigar box, so it feels like you're opening a case of Cubans. Most of the items come in either black or gunmetal-gray bottles to give the illusion of extra manliness, as if you're dousing your face in pure HGH. The truth is that some of these products are almost exactly the same as women's makeup supplies, just in different clothing. One company freely admitted this to me. "Our customers said that they wished that the packaging weren't so feminine," says Jane Iredale CEO JaneuhIredale, "so we repackaged the items."

I leaf through the Tom Ford grooming catalog: "Whether we like it or not, in our culture, men are judged by our looks, and looking the best you can is a show of respect to those around you." Okay, Dad. I spritz myself with some Skin Revitalizing Concentrate ($150!)—a clear spray meant to be applied prior to formal moisturization—and already my face looks better. Glowier. The wrinkles are smoothed. The skin is plump. I am a ripe peach.

Next, I apply a bit of the Mënaji aftershave hydrator ($34). Probst says they call it aftershave because "we just wanted to make sure you knew when we wanted you to put it on your face." Indeed, earlier in the week, Probst insisted I call her for instructions on how to use the products so that I could "experience the brand properly."

The lotion smells very nice. When I was single, I somehow got a free bottle of Kiehl's cucumber lotion, and I found that wearing it gave me a fresh farmers'-market musk that at least two women liked. (Also, I assumed the scent of cucumber subliminally reminded them of penises.) So I wore that Kiehl's all over my body. I am hoping this lotion has a similar effect. Secret penis thoughts for all.

Last, I put on some foundation—a women's product that got mixed in with the men's stuff (whoops!)—and then I go over to my wife for an assessment. She studies my face like it's an oil painting.

"What do you have on?" she asks, trying to reverse-engineer my face. "You do look more even! You need that, because you have kinda bumpy skin."

I do? Hey, screw you, lady.

I quickly learn that evenness is a crucial thing. When you hear the phrase male makeup, you probably get a mental image of Steven Tyler looking like a 200-year-old fortune-teller. But these products are not meant to be noticed. They are meant to accentuate your best features and hide your worst, so that you look like an expertly Photoshopped version of yourself. I look back in the mirror. I look all right. I keep looking.

My wife starts digging through the other products, clearly looking for shit for herself. Hands off my brosmetics, girl.

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DAY 2 : time to test this stuff out in public. I stow a tin of Jane Iredale's H\E (everything is manlier with a slash through it) bronzer ($45) in my bag and head to the gym. The folks behind H\E also gave me a facial brush (another $34) that looks like the ones you use to put on fancy shaving cream. After working out (GRRR SO MUCH HARD WORK FOR A MAN GRRR), I go to the locker room and, making sure other people can see me, take out the bronzer in front of a nearby mirror. I powder my face. The brush is delightfully soft, like a tiny puppy is doing somersaults on my cheeks. An old dude walks behind me toward the shower and doesn't flinch. Did he not notice? Or did he notice but actively tried to look like he wasn't noticing?

I get in the car to pick up my son from nursery school, and the smell hits me. One of the other reasons I've never considered makeup an appealing option is because makeup, in general, smells terrible. If you've ever had the misfortune of opening a woman's makeup bag, you know that it smells like a dead actor. These companies will make a mint the day they find a way to slap odorless on the label. Here in the car, I can smell the powder on my face. I can feel bits of makeup dust wafting up through my nose, like someone clapped a pair of chalkboard erasers in front of me. I feel like I'm gonna gag, so I open the windows.